PHYS 121 - General Engineering Physics I

• Recognize and articulate systematic behaviors in nature revealed by students’ own observations, especially those that are often overlooked through being obvious.
• Construct knowledge that does not depend on any outside authority; knowledge based on personal observation, reasoning, and possibly on physical laws or principles previously validated by the student. Students can explicitly articulate where they have done so and can devise instances where they can do this in other settings beyond the course.
• Demonstrate that they perceive that nature is governed by a small set of physical laws and principles, and exemplify this understanding by explicitly employing natural laws as components of a structured approach to design or problem solving.
• Employ a common approach to design and problem-solving in example cases that are fundamentally related but have diverse surface features.
• Represent a situation in general analytical, design and problem-solving settings, verbally, graphically, and mathematically, employing a structured approach to problem solving that leads from inputs to answers explicitly utilizing or respecting applicable physical laws.
• Exhibit a spectrum of problem-solving skills, including linear causal analysis, and global bookkeeping-type analysis (e.g. application of conservation laws). Students will productively employ methods to begin constructing solutions before the complete reasoning path is evident. They will also develop skills needed to validate results or claims by reasoning backward to check for consistency with fundamental principles.

Communications Outcomes

• Communicate science in authentic forms, including accurate reporting of apparatus and procedures, and construct arguments that reason physically from observations to conclusions using physical law and mathematics appropriately. The level of rigor expected is appropriate to the level of the course (that is, it increases through the sequence).
• Evaluate the quality of their observations and physical reasoning through understanding of origins and analysis of measurement uncertainty, limitations of theory and apparatus, and correct application of physical laws and principles.
• Read physics content written at the college level, including texts, journal articles, and physics problems.
• Interpret and generate clear physical reasoning (e.g. physics problem solutions) using multiple representations, including algebraic (symbolic), numerical, graphical, oral, written, and pictorial representations.

Specific Course Outcomes

• Acquire the knowledge and skills to implement the “Thinking like a physicist” outcome, employing Newton’s Laws in both linear and rotational forms as well as the resulting kinematics. Apply the concepts of energy, momentum, and angular momentum and the skills to decide if these are conserved for a system, specifically the articulation of a system boundary and the measure for transport of these quantities across a system boundary (e.g., work, impulse, angular impulse). All of this at a level appropriate to and utilizing a solid background in calculus.
• Connect fundamental laws and physical principles to ordinary experiences and to illustrations of experiences that will soon be encountered in professional careers (e.g., physics, chemistry, engineering, earth and space sciences, computer science, as well as related industries).
• Describe what physicists find unifying and elegant in the simplicity of having few laws of great power and be able to describe or illustrate this in several distinct topical areas.

• Quantitative/Symbolic Reasoning

• Natural Systems (Science and the Natural World)

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